42.Post-structuralism in France.

By the mid 20th century there were a number of structural theories of human existence. In the study of language, the structural linguistics of ferdinand de saussure (1857-1913) suggested that meaning was to be found within the structure of a whole language rather than in the analysis of individual words.

Jacques derrida developed deconstruction as a technique for uncovering the multiple interpretation of texts. Influenced by heidegger and nietzsche, derrida suggests that all text has ambiguity and because of this the possibility of a final and complete interpretation is impossible.

Post-structuralism is grounded in the concept of overdetermination, even when the concept does not appear explicitly in textual presentations.

Overdetermination as an epistemology implies the absence of a break between discourse and the objects of discourse. It implies that theory is not separate from reality nor is reality separate from theory. Post-structuralism recognizes the power of discourse to shape reality (both perceptions of reality and the concrete reality that is perceived). Discourse (theory) can produce sight of fictive objects, such as race (as in white race), or deny sight of real social relationships/objects, such as class (as in feudal class relationships). In other words, at any given moment and theoretical understanding, we experience only limited aspects of the world and some of what we experience is based on falsehoods embedded in some of the discourses we have learned.